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The Age of Discord
The Age of Discord truly began in 9:90, when relations between the Tevinter Imperium and the nations around it became strained. In a land that knew unity and pride beneath the Theirin flag, the Imperium was a looming threat and a burden. The only thing stopping the Imperium from being truly out of place was The Free Marches, a support that the Imperium rested upon. Throughout the rule of Hansel Hawke, the Viscount had dominated the Free Marches in its entirety with the assistance of Sebastian Vael and her own desire for power. The Free Marches were now a land of desolation, its title an ironic mockery of its current state. The people in power in The Free Marches swore themselves to the Imperium should they ever be needed. With another nation in support of it, the Imperium decided to conquer its lower country, Nevarra. In 9:95, this was done, with inflicted plagues and steel slaughter. Mad barbarians, slaves and free men alike, all swearing in the name of the Bloodhawk, in the name of the Imperium. Nevarra was plundered and raped and torn down into new land for the Imperium to expand itself onto. All children and women that did not escape were taken as slaves, while the grown men were struck down where they stood. The Tevinter were pleased with their new land, and the rest of Thedas exhaled in relief. Orlais was keeping a wise eye on the Imperium, fearing the slavers would attack its grand country of poise and culture. However, the Imperium was content to stay in the land of Nevarra for the time being. Eventually, the Imperium grew excitable at the prospect of conquering more land. They had named an age, and the hundredth anniversary of the rise of Hawk was soon coming. By this time, Hansel Hawke had become glorified as a sort of anti-Maker, her birthname cast aside and replaced with anything referring to her use of blood magic. Her surname was used as a metaphor, the idea of a vicious hawk eyeing all of Thedas in favour of the Imperium. Followers of the Chantry (mostly Antivans, Nevarran refugees and Fereldens) matched this with their Giustia, their golden-eyed Fay, a legendary carer and warden for those in need. Some even insisted she was truly a faerie as her name, 'Fay', suggested. The Antivan scholars attempts at keeping Faye Amell a realistic figure free of romanticism quickly fell to the citizens helpless desperation for a messiah. The Tevinter Imperium sent slavers to Antiva, and some blood mages to simply reside there and raise awareness among the Antivans that the Tevinter were coming for them. They stayed there for many years, not wishing to seem rash or greedy. The Tevinter Imperium did not intend to dominate all their conquests in too short a time -- they wanted their influence to seep into Thedas like a slow-moving poison which had no antidote. In 10:90, the Tevinter Imperium seemed to be preparing itself to take over another country. Antiva's fabled Crows were felled by prostitutes with magic in their blood and traitors. Antiva had no army to protect itself with, and all its people had was a fairytale warrior. It was at that time when the bastard daughter of a Chasind wilder and a vineyard owner took action. Jeanne Aranai believed that she could perform what was expected of a Giustia. She was devout, but not foolish. She would not stand by while her city fell crying the name of a woman of fiction. The seventeen-year-old Jeanne dressed as a man, and her formidable stature ensured she could move through the slaver-crazed Free Marches without being stolen. She travelled to Ferelden. Jeanne, like most of Antiva and Northern Thedas, believed most of Ferelden and its royalty to be descended from the bastards and adulterers of the Dragon Age. More than once, Jeanne had seen explicit graffiti of fornicating dragons scratched and painted about her city, representative of the Cousland Whore and her bastard king. Despite her beliefs, Jeanne knew she was not in a position to provoke Ferelden's people, so she sought the help of the Wilders rather than the common people. She knew their customs and language from those who had not hidden her maternal heritage from her. The Wilders helped her to find fine clothes so that she may travel to Orlais, and they agreed to be at her call when the time came for Tevinter to be defied. The Wilders had grown bored of Ferelden's south, and the intrigue of taking the soon-abandoned land of Nevarra was greater than their caution for death. Jeanne, in noblewoman's clothes, asked for the counsel of the Orlesian emperor of the time. She knew not his name, only that he had been watching the Tevinter Imperium from before she was born, with eyes sharper than that of Bloodhawk and numbers greater than the Imperium's. She said that she was descended from the Bards of Orlais, a lie, but a necessary one. Jeanne told the pacifist emperor that all of Thedas would be grateful for the noble, civilized taking down of the slaver Imperium. The emperor was an experienced man, and he knew that should the Imperium conquer Antiva, Ferelden and Orlais would surely be next. He agreed, on the condition that Jeanne fight with them should a war begin. On the first day of 9:91, the Imperium began an assault upon Antiva's borders. The Antivan Crows had been mutilated between the claws of the Bloodhawk, they claimed, and soon their country would be picked at like a carcass by Her vicious beak. Antiva would not have known that there would be a true massacre planned for them had it not been for Jeanne, who had sent out her father's men all around the country to warn everyone and encourage those who could to take up arms and be ready. They were all told of an army that was to help them as part of an ancient treaty. Jeanne felt uneasy, building her country's defence on lies, but she knew that it was what Antiva needed done. She wore Chasind armour and painted a dark swirl across the side of her brow to the middle of her cheek, coupled with another small curve behind it. The Wilders came from the water, halting The Free Marches' reinforcements before they had a chance to leave for Antiva. 5,000 Wilders took out the entire Free Marches defences, cutting them off from each of their cities and from their escape routes. Not even the great city of Kirkwall stood no chance against the barbarians - the City of Blood and Chains was sat upon by a lazy, self-indulgent fool of a Viscount who thought himself an Archon. He had no army, and eventually the Circle of Kirkwall revolted as well, and destroyed the city from the inside. Many mages and wilders died, but Kirkwall was a link in a chain, and it had been broken. On the second day, when the Tevinter Imperium's forces could be sighted on the horizon, Jeanne armed herself with a spear and mounted a horse. She had a young servant boy, a sickly orphan who had begged and begged to be apart of the action, carry her vexillum for her. It was a golden eye painted upon an earthy green, and the boy's hand never left its pole all the days that he rode beside Jeanne in battle. At first, it seemed the Imperium would slaughter them like dogs - the promised army had not come, and blood flooded the city as though it were the dirt of the streets themselves. Even Jeanne's father was murdered within his cellar, his red life source mixing with the fermented summerwine. However, that night, the remaining Crows and those who thought themselves quickfooted were sent to the Imperium's troops to find the slaves kept for bleeding. All the slaves were freed while their masters died or dreamed, and given weapons and armour to fight with. Orlais' forces came on the fourth day, flanking the Imperium. The Emperor fought too, often seeking out Jeanne on the battlefield to compare kills. At one point he bragged to her of killing an ogre, and she in return claimed that a man had died at the very sight of the eye upon her banner. Eventually, the Imperium was driven out of Antiva and back towards their native land. The slaver fires of Nevarra were being extinguished by the remaining Wilders. The Emperor was wounded in battle and had to retreat, but Jeanne fought until she and her men (and the remaining Orlesians) were in the very lands of Tevinter. Many magisters committed suicide at the sight of her and her vexillum, for they had heard from runners and their own men that the girl had not slept or eaten for days, and yet she rode as though she were newly woken. All of the Tevinter Imperium did not fall that month -- although the forces attacking them were many (even the people of Anderfels joined the fray at one point), the beliefs and sins of the Imperium would not be erased. Jeanne knew this, and so did her Emperor. The Tevinter lands were not claimed except Nevarra, which the Wilders made their own, for no fair man would want to live upon murderous earth. As the main power in Thedas in number and wealth, the Emperor of Orlais decided that the next Age would be named for the battle. Jeanne and the sickly boy that rode with her were taken as his wards, and he named the Eleventh Age to be the Golden Age, after the golden eye upon Jeanne's vexillum. She let him know of the Giustia and the significance of the golden eye, and Giustia became a figure known in not only Antivan religion, but in Orlesian and Amaranthine religion also. The orphan boy's name was Euric, and he grew to be a tall man of strong body. Jeanne and Euric spent the Golden Age they earned by helping with Orlais' vineyards and its battle training, and also in eachother's beds. With the fall of Tevinter at the hand of a simple girl and a grounded royal, fancies of a "Bloodhawk" or golden-eyed faerie soon became simply fairytales and myths told to children, either as warnings or as hopeful fables. The Age of Discord and its bloody history had ended, and Thedas sat upon its oceans with a new life. Read more: http://scribeverse.proboards.com/thread/102/age-discord#ixzz2uSdXueJz